March 25

This month we explore the chaotic qualities of speed, crime and brute force.

UI, Tweaks & Bug Fixes- Fixed a bug where the mission points tally screen was displaying an incorrect amount of points.
- Fixed a bug where players weren't returned to the Chapter Selection screen after completing certain missions.
- In-game announcements can now contain links to external websites.

Team-Ups- Team-Ups scale up to a player’s average level when receiving a Team-Up from a player.
- Team-Ups received from PVE Events no longer scale above the character’s max level.
- Fixed a bug where the “On Patrol” timer was overwriting the "Injured" timer on the Character Select screen.

Characters- While Star-Lord is stunned, his ability Oldest Trick in the Book will not increase the AP for enemy abilities.
- Doctor Octopus’s ability Armed and Dangerous now correctly does additional tile damage.
- Ms. Marvel’s ability Photonic Blasts now correctly does additional tile damage.

Update Notes

This month we explore the chaotic qualities of speed, crime and brute force.

UI, Tweaks & Bug Fixes- Fixed a bug where the mission points tally screen was displaying an incorrect amount of points.
- Fixed a bug where players weren't returned to the Chapter Selection screen after completing certain missions.
- In-game announcements can now contain links to external websites.

Team-Ups- Team-Ups scale up to a player’s average level when receiving a Team-Up from a player.
- Team-Ups received from PVE Events no longer scale above the character’s max level.
- Fixed a bug where the “On Patrol” timer was overwriting the "Injured" timer on the Character Select screen.

Characters- While Star-Lord is stunned, his ability Oldest Trick in the Book will not increase the AP for enemy abilities.
- Doctor Octopus’s ability Armed and Dangerous now correctly does additional tile damage.
- Ms. Marvel’s ability Photonic Blasts now correctly does additional tile damage.

About This Game

The best in match-3 puzzle gameplay meets Marvel’s biggest Super Heroes and Super Villains in the most epic puzzle adventure game out on your phone and tablet! Marvel Puzzle Quest combines your favorite Marvel characters with deep RPG leveling, player-vs-player tournaments, alliances, and much more. It’s time to unleash your inner Super Hero and wage war against your enemies.

Features• FREE TO PLAY
• Assemble the ultimate team from your favorite Marvel Super Heroes and Super Villains such as Captain America, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Loki, Punisher, Black Widow, Venom, and much more!
• Harness the power of Iso-8 to upgrade your team and collect comics to unlock new characters and abilities.
• Introducing new characters from the Marvel Universe and continually expanding game features!
• Brand new tournaments and events are launched each month to offer players fresh gameplay to explore.
• Unmatched strategy and depth! Embark on a journey of a global scale and unleash your strength and wits with your favorite Marvel characters to outsmart and defeat your opponents.
• Build Alliances among your friends and compete against rival Alliances.
• Snag the top rank in Tournaments, Alliances, and Season Play for new character rewards and other prizes!
• Stop Norman Osborn and his worldwide terror spree and watch the story unravel as different forces such as the X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D. and H.A.M.M.E.R. (Dark Avengers) compete for resources and influence.
• Be a part of the Marvel Universe in an epic story written by Marvel veterans Frank Tieri (Iron Man, Wolverine, Weapon X) and Alex Irvine (Iron Man: The Rapture, Daredevil Noir) based on the Dark Reign storyline, a monumental narrative in Marvel history.

Why? Because it is actually really REALLY FUN. And THAT is exactly the Problem!

How so you ask? Simple! Because it is yet another free-to-play, pay-to-win game. It is a good game disguising a hideous marketing strategy. It is absolutely repulsive.

Because you're gonna start playing this game and go "Oh man! This game is really fun! I want to keep playing it!" but then slowly the realization starts to seep in... YOU CAN'T. Why not? Well, lets see here... did you lose that last round? Bit of random bad luck and didn't quite make it? Want to try the round again? WELL TOO BAD!! Your heros are out of health now and won't be full again until THREE HOURS FROM NOW. Hey, did the game just give you a sweet new character as a reward for beating a stage? Great! Too bad you're out of spaces for new characters in your hero roster that you can only expand using the game's premium currency! Oh and by the way, your reward expires in five days and then you'll lose it forever, good luck trying to farm premium currency through the stages in game! Oh, I'm sure it won't take you very long if you've got a strong team of heros to keep plowing through with... Oh, what's that? They're all out of health again? Guess you're ♥♥♥♥ed! LOLS!! Seriously, this is the only game I've ever played that gives you rewards that you're never able to actually use.

And it all just spirals on downhill from there. You want to get anywhere in this game? "Give us your money!" And not just some of your money... ALL OF YOUR MONEY! Because lets face it, it would be EASY to release a normal, playable version of this game for say $15... but they don't want just a little of your money. They want ALL OF YOUR MONEY. There is a never ending supply of money that this game can drain away from you. Because that's how it was designed. And it is a damned crying shame!

Ok, I have put a lot of time, effort, and some money into this game.Overall at this point I must say that I would not recommend this game.

Basically when you first start playing the game it captures your interest quite well. Being based on the Marvel characters and universe was enough to do that for me. Upgrading your roster and characters from star level 1 to star level 2 is challenging but enjoyable as you can easily see the improvements. So you get a nice feeling of progression.

Upgrading your roster and characters from star level 2 to star level 3 becomes a nightmare because you first have to upgrade them 50% before they start to become useable. The playing time alone to gather the required resources to upgrade one star level 3 character 50% could take you a month. Throw in the fact that there is no scaling or bracketing in this game and players that already have full power star level 3 characters will sap points and rank from anyone below them and you start to get an idea of just how difficult a task this is.

For arguements sake, if you were going to spend 'real money' to upgrade a star level 3 character 50% instead of just playing the game it would cost you about US$100+. If you were going to buy all the powers for one character and max them out completely it would cost about US$400-US$600. So really, I would assume most people are inclined to play the game to gather the required resources instead.

Note that everything costs more as you progress. Characters from each star level catagory; ie: 1, 2, 3, and then 4 have an increase in 'experience' levels, hit points, damage per gem, and super power damage levels by almost double. But coming with that is an almost doubling of resources and costs involved for said characters.

This all adds up to the fact that the time you invest in the game has to increase as well. Where you might have been able to do well putting two hours a day into the game you will then have to put in three and then four hours a day. This doesn't mean all in one sitting just total overall time played per day. There maybe up to three events running simultaneously and if you wanted to do well in all of them you can sink alot of your time into it. You may feel obliged to do this since events are usually put into 'Seasons' and you may not see an specific event again until the next season or two in the future. 'Seasons' typically seem to run for the length of a month.

It's kind of awkward how events are setup. Each event usually lasts for 2 days or if longer are broken down into 'stages'. These longer events of up to a week are broken into 'stages' that last for 2 days each. What happens is to earn 'points' and keep you 'rank' up compared to everyone else, you have to play the 'stages' over and over as many times as 'plausible' in that 2 day period. 'Plausible' in that there is a 'full points' refresh timer of around 2.5 hours and also there is a point-catch-up (rubberbanding) system where the longer you wait between replaying the 'stage' the more points you can get. Also, each time you replay a 'stage' the difficulty and level of the enemy characters increase.

There are players that gain rank #1 and play the game every 2.5 hours even throughout the night. That is the type of competition you will be up against.

Ok, I want to end this review now as I think I have given you an insight into what is involved if you wanted to build and progress a roster of characters in this game. Or, what to expect once you have moved on from establishing a foundation.

A few other things that are really off putting:A) Characters have been changed by the developers out of the blue. Usually termed as 'nerf' where characters are weakened or resulting in less useable. How annoying for those players that have spent time/resources building said characters up. You can sell characters, but you will only get a pittance of what you have put into them.

B) There have been a myriad of server issues over the time I have played this game. Sometimes this has had a catastrophic effect on the scores/ranks etc of whatever event was running at the time. Sometimes the developers have given out a form of compensation but not always. Two recent events had server glitches that cost me ranking high. Unfotunately they happen in the later half of the week long events when you have alreadly invested alot of time.

C) The free-for-all pvp system means that those with maxed out or high level characters can just stomp over everyone below them. How frustrating to come out of winning a battle for 20 points reward to be greeted by a message that you have been attacked by half a dozen players twice your level losing 200 points. They really need to incorporate some form of scalability or player bracketing to make play balanced.

I would recommend avoiding this game unless you are happy to invest all your free time into it.

I really wanted to like this game, but the path chosen by the developers makes this one of the most frustrating experiences with a game I have ever had. The hours I have listed on this game are not technically accurate as I had it running in the background for days/weeks at a time. However I have easily put in 100's of hours into trying to like this game, hoping that the devs would fix the issues and it would improve. Ultimately I finally realized that there was near zero chance that would happen because the devs want the game to be this way.

First the lets talk about the good - If you enjoy PuzzleQuest you will like the mechanics, the incorporation of the Marvel license is topnotch both with writing and character design. If you can be content with just playing the story missions and only a small subset of the available champions then go ahead.

However if you are like me and want to play with the new champions when they are released and play the special events then you will pay. And if you pay realize that it is only a matter of time before that which you paid for is nerfed or sidelined or otherwise invalidated by whatever the newest cash grab from D3 is.

Here is how it works, lets say you have a set of beginning characters (called 2 star for their rarity) and are having fun. You see that a new character is being released (omg Nick Furry?! I want to play that one too!). In order to get covers for that character you have to buy them with real money, oh except you can't really buy them straight you have to buy a "pack" and hope you get the covers you want (along with a bunch of stuff you don't want). If you aren't willing to go that route then you will have to jump through some very specific hoops, namely you will be "competing" with other players for a chance to win the cover. You do this by direct competition (through a very very broken PvP style contest that I am not even going to get into its so bad) or by grinding away at special missions, missions that are designed to be overpowering and that will wound or kill your characters (requiring you to "rest" or buy medpacks with money). I don't know if I can stress how grindy these missions will be if you actually want a shot at the new cover, we are talking hours of playtime, but what is even worse is D3 picks the times you need to play. This is ultimately why I had to stop, in order to be successful with the rubber-banding and the like you had to be playing near the finish of each sub-event and each main event. That means you can't even just grind it out on your own time you needed to be hardcore during specific hours (forgot real life commitments). What I finally realized was there is no end game. That process described above is it. It doesn't get easier just harder, and not from a skill level just from a time commitment and frustration level. D3's entire model is to reward low level players greater then high level players to make them think rewards are quick and easy. Once you are hooked however you will constantly lose you chance at the new covers to the next wave of new players getting their hooks set. No only do I not recommend this to anyone I would be very cautious about ever playing anything from D3.

TL;DR - Avoid at all costs! I'm in too deep but it may not be too late for you.

I've been playing the version on iOS since October last year and a lot has changed. The game deals in ISO and Hero Points. ISO is common but you'll need lots and Hero Points are uncommon but both are required. How much you'll enjoy this game will depend on how much money and time you'll be OK with sinking into this hole.You collect covers of characters. Each cover is arranged in a 1-4 star configuration. 1* = common, 4* = super rare. How you can get covers is by either winning tournaments or by earning standard or heroic tokens and lucking in to a cover you require. A standard token would typically give you 1* cover with a sprinking of 2* cover and the day you get a 3* cover go get a lotto ticket. Heroic tokens are hard to come across but you can get anywhere up to 19 Heroic Tokens (personal experience) before you get a 3* cover. Why covers of characters and not the characters themselves? Because you can have more than one cover of the same character! Yes! Lazy! For instance, there are 3 covers of Storm - a 1*, 2* and 3* cover. Wolverine has 3 covers - a 2*, 3* and 4*. Thor has 3 covers - 2*, 3* and 4*, etc.On top of that, most covers have 3 coloured moves and a maximum of 12 covers per chracter. Eg. Iron Man Model 40 (3*) - Unibeam (red), Ballistic Salvo (blue) and Recharge (yellow) (minus Bullseye (2*), Dr Doom (3*), Ragnarok (3*), Loki (3*) who all have 2 moves and a maximum of 10 covers). Meaning in order to max out your character, you need 12 covers and A LOT of ISO to level it up to full level. 1* covers level up to level 40, 2* = level 94, 3* = level 166 and 4* = level 270. Also, each cover takes up 1 roster slot. You can buy more with hero points! You can buy cover packs with hero points/real money. They come in 1, 10, 42 packs. The amount of REAL money for hero points in this game is highway robbery. There is 0 value. If you were to spend money on this game, it would be in hero points but the little hero points you get for your hard earnt money is not even close to worth it. When you purchase a pack (because the only other time you can earn a 10 pack is through the season rewards), it USED TO guarantee at least one 3* cover. But they took that away because screw consumers. They don't want people having all the good covers by simply getting a "cheap" (it's not cheap) 10 pack with at least one guaranteed 3* cover in it. No no, we want you to jump through hoops to earn that 3* cover! What it DOES guarantee is a higher chance of getting a particular cover! So instead of of chance being 0.8%, it's 5.6%! They are REAL stats pulled right from the game! So if you get a 10 pack, you still have a VERY HIGH CHANCE of getting NO 3* covers! And this game uses them as the highest currency! From the 7 seasons so far, I have had 3 x 10 packs with 0 x 3* covers. This is what we're all aiming for! 3 and 4* covers! You think your hero points cost you a lot? Yes sure, but what are they REALLY worth?!? They can only buy you CHANCES of getting covers! If you already have one colour and you want another, you CAN SPEND 1250 Hero Points per 3* cover.You have two types of game: PvE (Story) and PvP (tournaments). When you start the game, you can go through the prolog (PvE) which is one of the worst stories ever told. You know that episode of the Simpsons where Burns pulls out the piece of paper from the monkeys typewriter and he reads out, "It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?!?" well, that monkey seems more capable of writing a better story than what is present here. Quite honestly, I've stop reading all the "story" in this game months ago as it's merely a flimsy glue that holds this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game together.It's not really pay to win because you can win tournaments (PvP) with a bad roster. The only difference is how active you are in playing. It's a game that masquerades as a casual puzzle game in the vein of bejeweled but make no mistake - they is no puzzle aspect and it's purely a numbers game that forces you to grind and pray that you finish first. All it takes to win is enough time to persist. You can have a strong team and if the computer feels like you're winning too often, it can decide to drop matching gems in favour of the enemy team. I've lost to a team half my level because the tiles dropped in the enemies favour. If you're up against someone who is too hard, you can skip them until you get someone easy. When you lose a round, it really hurts you because you get 5 health packs on a timer - 36 minutes for each health pack. And if you have a limited roster, it shortens the amount of covers you can use in a tournament. Once you've used up all health packs and your covers, you have to wait OR you can buy more health packs. One method of winning is purchasing health packs with real money/hero points and just continue playing until you've earned a score which is hard to beat. Then spend MORE real money/hero points to secure your position with a sheild. You don't really face people in PvP. You face their roster and the computer uses their roster. So how does the computer know which covers to use from other people's roster? Dunno. You would think it would pull their strongest characters but it doesn't always. If you find yourself towards the top of the tournament, you become enemy #1 and your team has a high chance of ending up in other people's list to face. If you don't have a sheild, you can lose points when your team is defeated by others. The only benefit in having the 3 star characters is more people to use in the roster. When your team gets naturally stronger with more 3* characters, you face stronger enemies so your weaker 2* becomes more useless. Also, it is worth noting that some characters are USELESS such as Bagman Spiderman and Bullseye. Bagman Spiderman has 3 useless moves, each more usless than the next and Bullseye is a 2* with 2 moves which means his max level is 78. And while he can lay down defense tiles like crazy, he can't take a hit which makes him pretty useless. All your 1* covers are useless 99% of the time once you develop an even remotely strong team.Why it's not really pay to win as well is because this game has no end to it. The end is you have all the covers. And they continually release new characters so the end to this game is when they shut down the servers or stop releasing new characters. It also feels like they do very little testing with the new characters/covers they release. We see it often when a new character comes out. It's hard to get excited about it when we know the second a bunch of people flock to the new character, it means its overpowered and will be nerfed.Also, saving is a little ♥♥♥♥. If you want to save your progress, it is only possible through Facebook connect on iOS. I didn't see any feature on PC and I don't know what Android saving is like.

If you hate your life and after reading what I've had to say still want to go through with your cult suicide decision to play the game, go join an alliance. They now cost nothing and the benefits are huge. Although you need to accept that your alliance will never be in the top 10 unless you have contacts and join one of the already established X-Men groups who are always in the top 10. Hell, it's hard to even place top 100 alliance without all 20 players being dedicated to winning.

In over a year, I've had to step back from the game 3 times because it has made me that angry and upset. I now play on a very casual basis and I can only ever treat it like that otherwise you burn out. I loved Puzzle Quest 1, 2 and to a degree, galactrix. But this is just dead ♥♥♥♥.

Well, another match-3 game, this one with a Marvel super heroes skin slapped on it.The game does look flashy, and it's not that bad.

You can assemble your avengers and do "battles" against forces of evil. From certain levels you can win "comic covers" which will give you a new hero or level up their skills. And iso points to level up their level. :/ it's a bit of an odd leveling system there, where you have to level up skills first before you can level up your heroes, but oh well... it works.

But again the play limiting+pay to play system is in place.This time it doesn't limit your play directly, but rather; when your heroes get beat up, they need time to heal back up. Or BUY a healthpack (oh well, at least you can win these too). See where that's heading? Yup... Another one of thóse things.At least you can keep playing as long as you're on a lucky streak.

My recommendation for all of these terrible play limiting/pay2play games is negative.I'm not recommending anyone to stay away from them (unless they have an addictive personality), but I'd certainly recommend anyone not to put a single dime into these terrible payment models. They're not worth it.

Do not fall for it! Let me be clear: This game has great potential! It takes the formula of Puzzle Quest and improves on the combat and adds a lot of personality through the Marvel liscense! That being said, what it comes down to ultimately, is a very cynical cash-grab.The moneytization is tailor made to abuse the player in every way. Let me explain:There are two kinds of currency: Violet Iso (regular) Gold (premium) Both can be bought with real cash. Now, both drop after successful missions. But only once! Every reward is locked after one drow. Afterwards, doing missions (which can take up to half an hour) only reward 20 Iso (to give a comparison: a booster pack costs 500 Iso). So, you have to do a mission 25 times to get enough Iso to buy a booster.Now, why not stick with the heroes you get and level them up?Because the only way to level up heroes is by either spending premium currency directly OR getting more copies of the comics, the heroes originate from. And the latter can only be achieved by buying booster packs. Which only give a chance to obtain the right comic. Furthermore, there is only one rarity category that can be bought with Iso-currency. The lowest, of course. And while you do have a chance to get a rare card from this category, the game is very honest about the fact that your chance is slim.And don't forget that you need several copies of one comic to level your hero up.This is a very blatant cash grab, made worse by the artwork. Yes, sadly, the artwork is very lackluster. The artist went for a semi-realistic style with dynamic posing. Sadly, the borders of different colours are very visible, which makes characters look unclean and bloaty and he had issues with contrasts and forshortening, making people look very strange and their clothes feel dodgy. (Take a look at Black Widow or Thor and you should see what I mean)I repeat: Do not spend money on this game! It does not warrant it at all!

The writing for this game is just so bad. I mean, the game is subtitled Dark Reign, so one would think it would follow the story of the Dark Reign story ark, but the story is so distorted that it barely has anything to do with the Dark Reign. And there is no new content at all, events just repeat in a circle...

Game is decent at best. The advantages the computer has is ridiculous. Constantly color starving you, massive cascades, and extra turns. It happens very often, one turn and the match is over for you. You can do this as well, but no where near the extent it happens for the computer. If you haven't invested much into the game, it is not worth it. It is a free game heavily designed as pay to win. 1 out of 10.

This game is another in a long line of games created to part people with there cash in an unending stream. These games are the bane of the gaming industry and will lead to another crash like we had in 1983. Do not spend in game cash on this game play it but dont spend any cash. It does not deserver your money, the freemium model needs to die.

I have seen microtransactions done well. This. This does microtransactions as horridly as I have ever seen. There is a good game here somewhere. But it's buried under so much microtransaction [expletive deleted]...that it's just unplayable.

This game has the potential to be a great match-3 type game. I thouroughly enjoyed the original Puzzle Quest game so I thought I'd give this a try. I was really enjoying it until I realized how much money will need to be dumped into the game to unlock things that are needed. The microtransactions in this game are ridiculous! I have no problem throwing a few bucks here and there at a dev that has a quality product, but the costs are so bad that it's not worth my time. Reduce the cost of the microtransactions and I MIGHT play it again.

i was just playing lighting round i had 331 points. i use 100 hero points my sheild is up i exit the field and the next page shows that i lost 3 points. making my new score297 far below my original points. this game is a shame if they steal your points then theres no point in playing. id like my 2 lightning round awards they were above heroic. this game needs to be more accurate or ill just stick to candy crush.

I really want to and should like this game but it's hard for me to. I get it's free and you make your money off of selling in game resources but it seems pointless to play otherwise. Feels like the computer is cheating half the time and I can never get enough upgrades for my characters to feel like I can actually do anything. When I do win a cover it's almost always something useless to me.

This game used to be a lot of fun. However, recent updates have changed the game engine. It has always been pay-to-win, but that's not my problem with it. The thing is, it gets you to compete in Vs. competitions for prizes. When you get high enough in the standings, The AI begins to manipulate the puzzle board so that the opposing team scores a multitude of extra turns, causing huge damage and amassing a lot of mana for the other team. So you die and you have to use health packs to resurrect your characters. Which means you have to buy health packs or pay for a shield. I don't mind paying for character slots, or even a shield if I'm not going to be able to play for several hours. But it's ridiculous to ask me to pay even as I'm playing. Other game manufacturers try to get people to play their games, and these guys have a game that people want to play, and rather than capitalize on that, their strategy is just to nickle and dime you to death on health packs. Ridiculous. Unless they fix it, I would only recommend trying this game if you have a lot of self-hate, and don't mind forgetting how you spent your money.

this game wouldn't be so terrible (oh and its simply terrible) if it havent so much greed in it, publishers trying to sqeeze money out of you even before you get hooked on it avoid it unless you are wallet happy player who are ready to throw money in games right away

Very expensive(think $2-300 if you want to get a particular hero by spending) Yet the design team loves to crap on paying players. The "customer support" team remains anonymous, cut'n'paste, and lies through their teeth about escalations(they don't really, just cut'n'paste a fake escalation and wait a bit). And the management team assures if you want to get out of a nerfed character they'll provide a sell back for in game currency less than the worth of the character to buy/build.

Basically, a total money trap. I have never seen a game so fundamentally anti-gamer.